The most gut-wrenching hiking story I have EVER told

every now and again I'll find a story that is just really upsetting to me now obviously a lot of the stories that I cover are all you know quite distressing but today's story which is about a missing hiker named Mike Turner uh it just really upset me it actually made it really hard to film this episode um not making that up it's just I was too emotional as I told it uh so consider this your warning that I personally believe this is a very upsetting story but an important story that we would not be covering if there wasn't some real weight behind it and I think the moral of this story ultimately is you really need to treasure your family while they're still around and you'll see what I mean when you hear the rest of this story it's just heartbreaking but for those of you who are sticking around for this story if you're a fan of the strange dark and mysterious delivered in story format then you've come to the right place because that's all we do and we upload once a week so if that's of interest to you given the kind of intense nature of the story let's go ahead and give the like button a big hug for once and also please subscribe to our Channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads okay let's get into Mike Turner's [Music] story on the afternoon of August 2nd 1998 a 48-year-old 6' 6in tall hiker named Mike Turner stopped for a moment and took his bottle out of his backpack and took a sip Mike was standing in a cluster of trees on the side of this mountain about 11,000 ft up inside of an area in Wyoming called the Fitzpatrick Wilderness the Fitzpatrick Wilderness is easily one of the most visually striking places in the entire world it's like all of the extremes of nature kind of collided together in this one place you have these massive you know 13,000 ft tall snow covered mountain peaks you have glaciers and then right below them right at the base of these huge mountains are all these lush green fields full of tall grass and flowers and animals running around and little streams and lakes I mean it's absolutely picturesque in fact some of the pictures of this area They look fake they're so ridiculous but the real reason the Fitzpatrick Wilderness was known as this unbelievably beautiful place was because really it went kind of Untouched by people because it was so hard to get to I mean basically the only people who stepped foot in this very surreal landscape were really experien Outdoors people like Mike Turner because it took a lot of knowhow just to get to this area and to survive in this area this is a very very rugged place but Mike Turner was not content just going to the Fitzpatrick Wilderness he really wanted to experience the true nature of this area and so what he was doing while he was out there was hiking off Trail and so he's in this totally remote place hiking around in an area that was not even marked on a map now to anybody who has not done any compass and map navigating out in the wild this might seem totally Reckless and to a degree it sort of is but it's something that people totally have a knack for I can speak from my own experience when I was in the military we did a lot of compass and map navigating like in the back country in Alaska and also in California and I was terrible at it but I can tell you some of my classmates definitely had sort of like an innate skill to understand where they were in relationship to terrain features and then if you combine that with prop for training and experience I mean these guys got really good at just being able to navigate with a map and compass and so Mike was one of those people that really was an excellent Navigator and so walking off Trail like this in such a remote place was sort of routine for him now Mike was not some full-time Adventurer this was something he did that was sort of a passion for him his job was he was a reverend at a Christian Church in Idaho and he had been for 10 years and Mike loved being a reverend he loved his congregation and you know his wife Diane and his three kids he had two daughters and a son they were all super involved in the church I mean it was a great thing but at the same time being a reverend was a lot of work a lot of responsibility and a lot of stress and a way that Mike had found to kind of cope with that growing stress of being a reverend was to go out hiking he actually found sort of ironically that when he was out in nature hiking he felt closer to God than when he was inside of his church preaching and it was because he sort of looked at the the world as this Grand gift from God and imagine being in the Fitzpatrick Wilderness looking at this unbelievable terrain I mean it looks like you know God made this I mean who else could this is so strikingly beautiful and so with that as context on this particular day that Mike had stopped to sip water 11,000 ft up on this mountain side this was actually the fourth day of a 9-day pre-planned solo hike through this Wilderness that Mike had been planning out for over a year now even though Mike was a very skilled hiker and Backpacker and survivalist he knew doing any sort of really long solo hike came with a whole bunch of risks that only really come if you're solo hiking the biggest risk being that if you get into trouble when you're out on a solo hike well you're all alone so you better have a really good plan for what you're going to do if you get into trouble and so Mike had come up with a great plan he had spent that whole year mapping out this off tril path he was going to take over these N9 days it was a 60m trip through the Fitzpatrick Wilderness and he drew out basically exactly where he expected to go on a map and he gave that map with all the different coordinates and exactly where he'd be on each day to his wife who also was a very enthusiastic hiker and he told her on the ninth day you're going to meet me at this spot at the end of the 60 mies at noon on this 9th day right here and I will meet you there and you can take me home however that plan had changed on that fourth day as Mike was sipping his water on the mountain side and only Mike knew it because he had no way to communicate back to his friends and family cell phones were very primitive at the time so he couldn't just call somebody I mean basically if he deviated his plan he was the only one who would know now the reason why Mike on the fourth day of this n-day trip decided to alter his course made a lot of sense so even though Mike was technically solo hiking he was not actually alone with him was the family dog named Andy who was a very good-natured black lab mix Who Loved going hiking and over the course of the previous day and then into this fourth day he and Andy had been up at elevation at about 13,000 ft walking on some Icy parts of the mountain and Andy's Paws were getting really raw from kind of walking on the jagged ice and that day on the fourth day Mike had noticed Andy was whimpering and struggling to keep up when normally Andy was super energetic and running all around and he knew that you know my course that I'm supposed to be going on for the next few days is going to be going all through these mountains with all this ice and I don't think Andy can keep up he's not going to be able to do it and so he had decided to Sid skirt the mountains to avoid the ice and even though this path was definitely going to take him a little bit longer it would still bring him to the same destination to that same pickup spot where his wife and his family would be waiting for him now Mike understood that by deviating his route Not only would his family not know like they would have no idea where he was but also this secondary route he'd be taking to save Andy's Paws was going to take a little bit longer than the intended course would take and so he knew he was not going to be there at the time he said he would so he was not going to be there at noon on the 9th day it was going to be maybe the 10th day or Beyond but Mike had planned for this contingency he had brought extra supplies specifically if he had to extend his journey and so he felt confident that even though this was a big risk you know to take this path that nobody knows he's on he felt he could do it with no problems and so after Mike finished taking a sip of his water he pulled a bowl from his pack that was for Andy and he poured some water in and he placed it on the ground and Andy kind of made his way over and began lapping at the water and as he did Mike looked down and saw Andy's tail wagging happily and Mike felt confident you know seeing how much better his dog was already doing that this was definitely the right decision taking the secondary route was definitely the way to go but as Mike waited for his dog to finish drinking Andy suddenly stopped and then lifted his head up with his ears perked up like he had sent something and then before Mike could stop him Andy just took off running into the trees and disappear appeared now Andy was a playful dog that periodically kind of ran around on the hikes like this but remember Mike is out in the back country and he's deviated his path he needs to be really sure of where he is he can't afford to make mistakes here and if Andy just goes Rogue and he has to go chase after him the opportunity to get turned around or lost or maybe come in contact with some big Predator that maybe Andy has sensed were pretty high and so Mike grabbed the bowl and took off running into the trees after Andy and after going into those trees he emerged on the other side Mike did and suddenly he was hit with this incredible View kind of looking down towards this Lake and there was this huge clearing on the side of the mountain that was filled with these huge Boulders like Boulders the size of small cars and they were everywhere basically the mountain as it eroded chunks of rock were rolling down into this clearing that was sort of at a slant down towards this Lake and it just filled the entire clearing with boulders to the point where you really couldn't actually Walk On Solid Ground the only way to get from where Mike was and where Andy was because at this point he could see his dog his dog was making his way towards the lake clearly that's what Andy had sensed the lake and he was going to get a drink or something and so Mike knew to get to his dog he would basically have to climb onto the boulders and jump from rock to rock all the way to his dog and so Mike tried calling for Andy one more time to stop and come back but Andy was on his own program going towards the lake and so resigned to the situation Mike climbed on top of the first Boulder and began jumping Boulder to Boulder in the direction of his dog one week later on the afternoon of August 9th Mike's wife Diane along with her three kids and some family friends stood at the start of a trail called the Big Sandy Trail which was the designated meeting spot where Mike said he would meet his family at the end of this 9-day journey and as Diane stood there at this meeting place she kept anxiously checking her watch Mike was late and not just a few minutes late he was a full 24 hours late Mike was supposed to be there on the 8th at noon and now it's the 9th and he's still not here but remember Mike is a guy that did stuff like this fairly regularly he was very competent out in the wild and everybody knew when he went off on this journey that of course there was some variability to when he would actually arrive at the meeting place you know despite Mike saying I'll be there on the 8th at noon Diane and her friends and family all sort of felt like well I hope he's there at noon but realistically he might be you know several hours or maybe even a day late and that's okay and so the day before when he didn't show up at noon people were anxious but they were okay now 24 hours later and still Mike has not shown up there's no trace of him Diane and our kids and the family friends they were starting to worry and in fact before Mike left on this trip he told Diane that if for some reason he does not show up on the 9th so 24 hours after he said he would be there and it's past 4:00 on the nth this is the trigger point that Diane should call the authorities and assume something is wrong and send out a search party and so dianae is checking her watch on the 9th and soon enough it's 400 p. m. Mike's not here 4:05 410 4:15 still no mic and even though she knew her husband said now it's time go get the authorities she just couldn't bring herself to do it she felt like it's such a huge to-do if you get a search party organized out here I mean that's a massive effort super expensive and she felt like the second she told authorities that like Mike would come walking out of the Wilderness with a big story to tell and a big apology for being late and so she convinced herself that you know what give him one more day I'm sure he's bound to show up but the next day on the 10th when still there was no sign of Mike that morning Diane did go to the authorities and she reported Mike missing and just as she expected a massive search was launched for Mike but you need to keep in mind here that again Diane and the Searchers and everybody besides Mike has no idea that he has aled the path he was on and they're going to be searching this massive expanse of wilderness that even with the best of conditions knowing exactly where someone is on their route I mean it's so hard to find people out here I mean it's totally rugged things are obscured from view from the air from the Land There are areas you can't even get to there's Predators out there I mean this is a dangerous thing to be doing and again they don't know he's not even on that path anymore he's deviated and so despite helicopters in the air you know horseback teams out in force hundreds of volunteers combing the area looking for Mike nobody found a trace of him and after 2 weeks went by with this huge search producing nothing they finally had to call it off and so of course you know Mike's family is just unbelievably devastated they have no idea what's happened to [Music] Mike have you ever thought to yourself man I just wish I could consume the strange dark and mysterious ious in live storytelling format well guess what that is now a reality because I am going on tour I'm going to go to 15 different cities around the country and stand on a stage and tell some wild stories to anybody who wants to join and these will be a combination of old school classic you know MrBallin strange dark and mysterious stories and some new ones that have not been published on any of our platforms so some new stuff you can only get if you come see me live but you got to act fast because we just announced this tour last week and already tickets are being bought at a record speed here so if you want tickets you got to act now all you have to do is go to tour.

Ballin studios. com or click the link in the description below in terms of the types of tickets you can buy there are General seating tickets and there's also the VIP package if you want to meet this guy okay so that's over here and for our VIP ticket holders bring your graphic novel with you if you bought it on pre-sale or you can actually buy a copy of the book at the venue and I will sign the book during our meet and greet so that's just for the VIP people bring your graphic novel or you'll have a chance to buy the graphic novel at the venue and I will sign it for you when we finally get to meet so again go to tour. Ballin studios.

com and get your tickets now I will see you [Music] there 5 days later so 5 days after the end of the official search we're now at August 28th at this point a couple of Backpackers were hiking through an area in the Fitzpatrick Wilderness that was actually about 17 Mi away from the last known sighting of Mike Turner now that was not when he went through the trees and saw the boulders this was around the time Mike literally began the 9-day epic journey somebody had seen him in one area and so where these two Backpackers are is about 17 miles away from there and so these two Backpackers they were aware that Mike Turner was missing because they were fly up all over the place around the outside of the Fitzpatrick Wilderness at the beginning of all the trail heads and in town and all over the place so they were aware of this aware that Mike was missing and his dog was missing and as they're just sitting there taking a break this totally emaciated ragged looking black lab came out of the tree line whimpering and looking like it was on its last legs it was Andy and right away these Backpackers knew that's the missing dog and so they lured the dog to them with granola bars and Andy came up and he ate they gave him water and just so you know Andy would survive and make a full recovery and so after these Backpackers have Andy in their possession they immediately contacted authorities who then got in touch with Mike's family and said hey we found Andy and so you can imagine the absolute roller coaster of emotion Mike Turner's family is going through now that they hear Andy is okay Andy's come out of the forest they're thinking oh my goodness maybe Mike is okay too maybe Andy can lead us back to where Mike is Mike is this totally skilled survivalist he's got to be alive out there and so after discovering Andy a second search was launched using Andy as the guide dog they basically went to that spot where the Backpackers found him and basically Andy's family and some other volunteers allowed Andy to lead them back into the Wilderness hoping it would lead them to Mike and so as this new search began with Andy leading the way a separate Backpacker who we will call Brian just for the sake of the story that's not his name but we're going to call him Brian he was hiking through a SE of the Fitzpatrick Wilderness not near where Andy was this is a separate area and Brian he was not involved in looking for Mike Turner but he was aware that Mike was missing because again he had seen all the missing person Flyers he had seen the news and when he began his own hike Into the Wilderness he had seen at the start of his own trail head a big flyer with a picture of Mike Turner and his dog saying he was missing so Brian's aware of Mike Turner's absence but he's just going on his own hike Into the Wilderness and after a few days of solo hiking his way into this totally rugged expanse he eventually reaches this kind of dense cluster of trees about 11,000 ft up on the side of a mountain and he walks through those trees and when he emerges on the other side out in front of him sloping down to a lake is this unbelievable Boulder Field that practically takes his breath away but that was not the thing that really got his attention instead as he's taking in these Boulders and this unbelievable view of the mountains in the distance and this Lake he noticed there was a man sitting on a rock fairly far across this boulderfield with his back to Brian just staring at the lake now remember this is like the middle of nowhere and Brian certainly was not expecting to come across any other person on this journey and so naturally he thought okay I need to go up and make sure this guy is okay or if nothing else I want to talk to him I mean this is a very rare thing to come in contact with other people out here and so Brian began walking towards the guy to see what was going on well that man was the missing hiker Mike Turner and my goodness did Mike Turner have a story to tell but to understand Mike's story we need to go back 29 days to the point when Andy the dog had taken off running from Mike and he had gone into the Boulder Field and Mike had emerged through those trees and seen the boulders he seen his dog and he began climbing onto that first rock to begin making his way towards his dog so Mike gets up on that rock and he begins hopping from Boulder to Boulder to Boulder and at first it's going fine he gets about halfway across the Boulder Field he's you know yelling to Andy to stay put and he's kind of making his way it's all good but then he reaches this one particularly large Boulder that when he jumped onto it it was kind of unstable and it began to wobble under his feet and so instinctively Mike tried to leap off of the wobbly Boulder onto another Boulder that was right nearby but when he jumped he sort of undershot this second Boulder and so did not land on it and stay put on it instead he kind of Hit the face of the second Boulder and slipped down to the ground didn't hurt Mike he's just is now on the ground in this small space between the boulders however unfortunately the wobbly Boulder right behind Mike well it didn't just continue to wobble it wobbled to the point where it rolled forward and literally came to a rest against the second Boulder that Mike had just jumped onto and failed to land on top of basically wobbly Boulder impacted second Boulder sandwiching Mike between them but critically it did not harm Mike this is going to take some explaining but it'll make sense after I go through it wobbly Boulder had what looked like almost a U-shaped cutout on the face of the wobbly Boulder like imagine a perfectly round Boulder but there's like a divot kind of sitting on the front of it and it just so happened that on the second Boulder in front of wobbly Boulder it also had a sort of divot on the face of It kind of looking like a u-shape and when these two Boulders collided these 800lb Boulders Mike happened to be standing exactly in the position where those two cutouts wrapped around him like shackles they basically pinned his ankles together where he could not pull his legs up and out of this totally tight space that was just big enough to hold his legs in place it was like he was anchored to the ground but again Mike is unharmed his legs aren't broken he's not battered nothing he just cannot move now Mike instantly would have known this is a really big issue because he can't move these 800 lb Boulders they are 800 lb and he's by himself minus his dog who can't really help him with the boulders and so Mike immediately just jumps into oh my goodness I have to find a way to somehow just move these Boulders even just a millimeter a centimeter would be enough to free his feet and so he pulled off his bag and one by one he pulled off every piece of equipment he had including his camera tripod and his stove and whatever he had and he did everything he could to try to pry these stupid Boulders off of him but they would not budge and so after 2 hours of trying in vain to free himself it dawned on Michael that he was not going to be able to free himself the only way he was getting out of here is if somebody found him and rescued him and so Mike doing his best to stay calm he pulled out his journal he had brought along for this trip in order to detail you know his closeness with God and you know what he was learning throughout this journey and he began documenting what happened to him to include you know why he was in this boulderfield what he was doing when he got stuck you know how he wound up in these sort of granite shackles so to speak he also very clearly in his writing was very much putting his faith in God to get him out of here he wrote in his journal on this first day two hours into this predicament I am in your hands Lord I don't know what I may face the idea being I don't know what's going to happen to me but my faith is in you I know you will help me through this and so after writing this initial entry Mike turned his attention to surviv like not trying to push the boulders off but trying to survive amidst The Boulders as long as possible and so he pulled out his blue sleeping bag and kind of wrapped it around himself to insulate himself he got out his stove and there was some snow in reach and he began putting snow in his stove and melting it to create water and he also pulled his tent flap over the top of him I mean he was basically setting up camp inside of these Boulders and that first night must have been absolutely horrifying I mean the temperatures dropped down to near freezing even though during the day it was over a 100 degrees Fahrenheit but that night he's in this horrible position just trapped with his own thoughts just hoping and praying that you know God was going to get him out of here the next day when Mike woke up he wrote in his journal some more and he began detailing his biggest fears one of them was potentially having to have his legs amputated if he got out of here you know the damage of losing circulation to his legs was scary he wrote that he had food for at least a week but he only had two quarts of water and there wasn't all that much snow around him left to melt and he was running out of fuel and so he was really worried about not having enough water even though very ironically he was like 25 30 ft away from a lake which he could have drank water from but again he's trapped to the ground and so on the second day Mike actually attempted to throw his water bottle which he connected some rope to to try to get it into the lake to capture some water and pull it back to him but when he threw it it was just short of the water he could not get it into the water so he couldn't scoop any water into his bottle and then when he tried to retrieve the bottle as the bottle was being dragged towards him it got wedged in some rocks and again he can't move so he can't possibly fling it out of these rocks and so he couldn't even get his water bottle back and so by the end of that second day Mike's tone in his journal began to change it wasn't totally negative yet but he began talking about how man I wonder what's going to happen when I run out of water I wonder what my urine will taste like if I mix it with Crystal Light so it was kind of like he was joking about the fact that he was going to try to make his PE taste better but it also showed he was beginning to realize just how serious the situation was nobody knows where he is he's completely off the beaten path he has no idea if anybody even knows he's in trouble and he's about to be out of water the next day so the third day of being trapped inside of these Boulders Mike would Once Again Begin writing in his journal and his tone seemed a bit more optimistic despite the fact that he has not solved you know this Water Crisis he's about to face he's down to his literal last quart of water but in his journal he talked about how this whole trip he went on this n-day trip he had planned out the whole point was to become closer to God and he felt like you know what I've really done that in the past couple of days what I wanted to achieve having a really spiritual event here it's happened like times 100 being trapped here I mean this is the closest I've ever felt to God but you could just tell there was just an underlying sense that I'm going to get out of here I'm going to learn from this experience I'm not going to take stupid risks anymore I'm going to be a better father be better husband be a better Reverend I'm going to make something of myself I'm going to improve as a result of this suffering I'm going through right now however over the next few days that might continued to be trapped in these rocks with no help coming his optimism clearly waned he began to write that he was angry with God he wondered you know is this a punishment for something I've done and he also thought you know maybe I failed God and that's why I'm here but it was just clear that Mike who was this deeply spiritual person who absolutely believed in higher power how could he be in this terrible position and not be getting any sort of help from God how could that be but unfortunately for Mike his situation only got worse on about day five or six as Mike was laying wretchedly inside of this horrible Camp he had built he noticed that he had completely lost feeling in his left leg like completely it was a dead leg at this point and even though he knew by this point how bad of a situation he was in this sparked a new very real fear inside of that he detailed in his journal he knew his body was actually beginning to break down and still there is no help no Divine help coming in despite all his prayers there's no one coming to rescue him he is all alone in fact Mike would write in his journal something that practically brought me to tears when I read it first and it just said so lonely more than I imagined I just can't picture what it would be like to be trapped out there you're not hurt but you can't go anywhere and you're all alone just slowly withering away and your family there's somewhere out there they have no idea nobody knows it's just unbelievably devastating the mental torture this man went through is just out of this world but it just keeps getting worse day six day seven Mike at some point actually dropped his journal and because he can't actually reach it anymore he just picked up whatever objects he had and continued writing on them like his pocket Bible and then also there was an instruction manual for his stove and he would write in the margins and his writing just continued to get more and more pessimistic and sad he began writing about how intensely he regretted his decision to take the long route he was totally setting him up for this situation nobody would have known where he is and so he's hating on himself he's still mad at God why aren't you here aren't you seeing how badly I'm suffering I mean this is a guy who's basically losing his mind with regret and anguish and just pure loneliness I mean this is horrible but then on the seventh and eighth day or ninth day that he was stuck in these Boulders once again Mike's writing on his random things that he wrote on took another turn Not only was his writing becoming more and more illegible because he's literally dying here I mean his body's breaking down he's exposed to the sun all day and then at night it's freezing cold he's not having any water he's drinking his urine you know he's got no food left he can barely write his writing begins to talk about his family and his children you know at this point Mike must have known the end is near and so all he had was just the thoughts of his family he began wondering you know what his kids' life were going to be like in the future because obviously the implication here is he knows he won't be there to see it he'll be dead and then in some of the last entries he would make it was obvious that really Mike had turned back to God now he was back to approaching god with open arms he was no longer upset or questioning God's plan he was just ready he actually wrote in his journal fill me with peace Lord may my conditions not deny my love for you and then he wrote I'm ready to die though I'm missing my family and then in his final entry which must have been on the 10th day of his predicament Mike's writing was basically completely illegible at this point because he's right on death's door and even though you can't really tell what he wrote at the end of this final entry it says love Dad it was like he was saying his final goodbye to his family then Mike took off his wedding band and he placed it on the Rock next to him because he knew once he died and decomposed the ring would fall off his bones and be lost in the Rocks below and he clearly wanted his family to have that wedding ring so he placed it on the Rock and then he prepared to die when Brian the hiker walked up to the sitting man he saw on this Boulder he realized almost immediately that that was Mike Turner because he had seen the missing person flyers before he came into the Wilderness and so knowing this is the guy they're looking for and knowing he couldn't move him he covered him up and then he took Mike Turner's wallet which contained his ID and then as fast as he could Brian the hiker made his way back to the beginning of the trail head and contacted authorities I will say it took Brian almost 3 days to contact authorities and he was going as fast as he could retracing his steps so that really gives you a sense of really just how remote of an area Mike was in when he passed away and then also it would turn out that Andy the dog who was leading that secondary search you know he wouldn't find Mike before Brian would but once they discovered where Mike had died and they checked the direction Andy was taking his family it was obvious that Andy was heading in that direction he was a faithful dog going back to save his owner he just wasn't going to get there in time and to close the story out making it even more tragic on the day that Mike left his wife Diane and his three beautiful children to begin this n-day Trek after he left Diane received a bouquet of flowers in the mail that Mike had sent that he knew would arrive after he had left and attached to this bouquet was a note and the note was written to Diane and it just said thank you for letting me live this adventure know that wherever I am and whatever I'm doing I'm thinking of you hello all you fans of the strange dark and mysterious uh as many of you may already know we always have merchandise for sale at shopmr bin. but in addition to the yearround offerings that we sell on on shopmr ball.